Go cougs

October 10, 2014

Living the Always – On Lifestyle

When you look around, notice that there is a cellphone within reaching distance, maybe a music player, perhaps even a computer or game system. As humans and especially college students, we are “always on” or “connected” in some way.

According to Danah Boyds “Participating in the Always – On Lifestyle”, a lot of us are just like him. We are always connected, and it is harder to calculate the time we spend offline than when we are online. Many of us sleep with our phones on the headboard, or under our pillow, some don’t even sleep at all because social media is not letting you go. After all, if you didn’t check Facebook or Twitter before you go to sleep, did you even go to sleep?

But technology is a beautiful thing, it is growing and constantly upgrading, so why shouldn’t you always be on? It probably makes your life easier, it probably is quicker than using pencil and paper to write letters or a shopping list, but at the same time it probably takes away from interaction with one another. And that is exactly what Douglas Rushkoff’s articles are about – do not always be on social media when you are with your friends, physical interaction is valued more and will be more beneficial.

Everyone has done this though, I bet everyone has gone to a friends house and sat on their phones for a couple hours combined. In today’s society, when you ask a friend to come over, you are really asking if they’ll come sit on their phones at your house. Douglas is merely suggesting that this change, and that you start to interact with people in person as much as possible, instead of digitally. No one cares how many friends you have on Facebook, or followers on twitter, if you can’t carry on an intelligent, real conversation, with another person face to face.

These people could have had a great encounter with a stranger, maybe even found true love, but instead they had to see what was going on in the world and that is disappointing; yet we are all guilty of doing it.

These three articles have been my favorite so far, I think that they bring up a lot of good points that everyone is guilty of doing at some time in their life and with no doubt it will happen again. It makes you stop and think, what could you be doing instead of checking your phone for the 43rd time today? It makes you want to go out and meet new people and see what you have been missing so far.